With over 17,000 hits in 12 months I am looking at upgrading both my site as well as some of my hardware. I am looking at sponsorship and have had a few requests from small local business owners about advertising. Any thoughts, tips or ideas would be appreciated.

Well I just went to your site 3:21pm eastern and nothing seem to be giving the right data. So I can't think of why anyone would return. The date is not right either says it updating and the temp was in the 50s but the NWS say it in the 80s Something is broken you just can't ask for someone to kick in money and not be up and running 24/7 360 with out the data being right . I would be

To bring this back on topic, if any of you do have advertisers, how do you approach them?I get 20-25k page views a month and would really like to get some new equipment, but the wifeaint working and there's no $$$ for me to do any weather related stuff with.

And if you do have advertisers, do you charge per month, per year or what?

On a larger issue with weather websites, I have started by pounding the pavement. Emails and visits to local businesses usually do the trick. Applebees is my snowfall contest sponser and they have graciously done it for the past 4 years. Nothing out of my pocket. They give me a $25 or $50 giift certificate to me to pass on to the winner(s) of the contest. That's just a start. I am still looking for paid sponsors to help offest the cost of doing business.

I would think there are 2 different approaches to adding ads.1. Google ads - This is probably the easiest. Most of the ads would probably not be for the local businesses.2. Local businesses Sponsor - This would take some sales skills. Put yourself in their shoes. If you were a local business, what would you hope to gain from advertising on a weather website?

Have you used Google Analytics http://www.google.com/intl/en/analytics/index.html to study the people who are visiting? I have averages about 32,000 hits per year over 3 years. But that is not really important. Probably 10% of those hits are me. What is important is unique visitors. I get roughly 50 unique visitors a day. Of those I am guessing 30% are not from around here. (visiting from forums, or webcam hoping) So of the 35 people who are local, (meaning 7 county region) how many would actually respond to an ad? If a sponsor were to pay, say $50 per year to advertise, what would his Return On Investment (ROI) be?

Personally I hate ads and I am an avid user of ad blocking software. One picture ads are not so bad, but the internet is now filled with scrolling, popping, flashing, etc.. ads that are so obnoxious that it is hard to see the webpage. If I want to buy something, I just Google it to find the best deal.

I did go the Google ads route to generate some $$. Probably by the end of the year it will generate2 years of hosting money for me.

I also use Google Analytics. Great addition to my site. I get enough hits that charging someone say$50 a year may be worth a little to them. I was thinking of asking someone if they want to advertiseon my site for nothing just to see if it's worth it to them for the heck of it. Depending on the weather here,I can get 10-12k pageviews in a month and they'd have some good viability on my website I think.

Well I just went to your site 3:21pm eastern and nothing seem to be giving the right data. So I can't think of why anyone would return. The date is not right either says it updating and the temp was in the 50s but the NWS say it in the 80s Something is broken you just can't ask for someone to kick in money and not be up and running 24/7 360 with out the data being right . I would be

Wasn't trying to be mean.. hope you except my apology.

No offense taken The 968 I had been using finally crapped out completely last week. A Brand New VP2 will be here this Wednesday and up and running by hopefully Thursday or Friday.

To bring this back on topic, if any of you do have advertisers, how do you approach them?I get 20-25k page views a month and would really like to get some new equipment, but the wifeaint working and there's no $$$ for me to do any weather related stuff with.

And if you do have advertisers, do you charge per month, per year or what?

My older weather site has two info tags on it on the bottom of the menu. One for Xara and one for PhoneTag (don't use that product any more).

Both are unobtrusive and the Xara, which is a product I use myself a lot, generated a lot of revenue for a couple years until they screwed up the affiliate program. I still get notifications from PhoneTag which would provide me with 1 month free service if someone actually signed up for it.

I used Google voice now instead.

My newer weather site, doesn't have any ads on it. I sponsor it myself or rather my business does.

One of these years, I will merge the two into a single site using the software I am using on the new site as it is much easier to maintain and make quick changes to.

Logged

All you need is Time, Aptitude and Desire ... and you can build just about anything...

I use all Google Ads on my site. They do match me up with many of our local businesses in my area.

I started using Google Ads from nearly the very beginning of my weather site, back in mid 2006. At first I thought, why bother because it was just pennies per month. It took me about 2 years to finally get my first paycheck. Now I get a paycheck each and every month for the past several years. I won't tell you the exact income, but to give you a rough idea, it is more than 400 hundred bucks every month. Each year the income has doubled so far. Google ads are very productive.

I think Weather Sites have a unique niche for advertisers. There is an endless number of products that fit perfectly with the weather scheme.

If you are using USAweatherfinder for unique hits, you may be doing your site stats a disservice. They only count unique public IP addresses. So, if everyone here at work visits your site, (all 9 of us) through our single cable modem, we get counted as one unique hit, not 9. Look at a free counter like Statcounter, which is cookie based, for better numbers.

If you are using USAweatherfinder for unique hits, you may be doing your site stats a disservice. They only count unique public IP addresses. So, if everyone here at work visits your site, (all 9 of us) through our single cable modem, we get counted as one unique hit, not 9. Look at a free counter like Statcounter, which is cookie based, for better numbers.

Thanks Chris! You bring up some good points. I was aware of the handicap on unique hits at USAweatherfinder, but I didn't know about the unique hits cookie procedure at Statcounter. Good to know! I also like that they have the "returnees" stat. I have been using Sitemeter for several years. A very nice service but as you probably know they don't do unique hits. I am running both for now. I should probably dump usaweatherfinder to make up for the extra bandwidth.